Appendix C · Glossary of Names and Terms

In the main text, every Pāli or Sanskrit term is glossed in a plain phrase at its first appearance, and its romanization—those letters with their little dots and bars (diacritics)—is carried there in full; this appendix gathers the full set in one place, with the Pāli and Sanskrit forms laid side by side.

The reader who wants to know how a term is written in the original, and what it first meant, can consult this table. The reader who would rather not bother can skip it without losing anything of the book—which is exactly why it sits at the back.

("P" marks Pāli; "Skt" marks Sanskrit; where the two traditions write the same word differently, both forms are given.)

I. Three Backbone Words, and Their Reverse Side

• Giving — 施 — dāna (P/Skt) — The act of giving out—the visible hand, reaching out.
• Letting-go — 捨 — cāga (P) / tyāga (Skt) — The inner loosening—no longer clutching at "mine." The true protagonist of this book.
• Offering — 供／供養 — yāga (P/Skt, with the flavor of ritual sacrifice) / pūjā (Skt, presenting with reverence) — Presenting something with respect; its object is a field of merit (the Three Jewels and persons of goodness).
• Stinginess — 慳 — macchera (P) / mātsarya (Skt) — The mind refusing to let "mine" become "mine and theirs"—that small inward contraction when someone asks. The reverse of letting-go.

II. Kinds of Giving

• The gift of wealth — 財施 — āmisadāna — Giving material things away.
• The gift of the Dharma — 法施 — dhammadāna (P) / dharmadāna (Skt) — Giving the Dharma away—teaching it, transmitting it, living it.
• The gift of fearlessness — 無畏施 — abhayadāna — Giving "you need not fear"—by holding to not killing and not taking, beings receive their ease of heart from you.
• The offering of reverence — 恭敬施 — (prasāda-dāna, the gift of pure faith) — Giving a measure of reverence, an affirmation that "you are originally a Buddha," as the gift itself—Sadāparibhūta's bowing.
• The gift of body and life — 身（命）施 — dehadāna — Giving even the body, even the life—the type of Bhaiṣajyarāja's burning of the body.
• Rejoicing — 隨喜 — anumodanā — Having contributed nothing oneself, simply rejoicing from the heart in another's good deed—itself a real and solid gift.

III. Letting-Go and Recollection

• Recollection — 隨念 — anussati (P) / anusmṛti (Skt) — Returning to one object again and again, letting the mind be carried along by it.
• Recollection of letting-go — 捨隨念 — cāgānussati — Fifth of the six recollections—looking back at what one has already given, already loosened.
• Letting-go loosened — 捨已鬆放 — muttacāga — The mind has untied the boundary-line of "mine" and no longer clutches it tight (first of the five marks of letting-go).
• Hand washed clean — 手淨 — payatapāṇi — The hand always ready, able to give (second of the five marks).
• Delighting in relinquishment — 樂於放下 — vossaggarato — The mind's default setting is no longer "keep" but "loose" (third of the five marks).
• Responsive to those who request — 應求而與 — yācayogo — When others open their mouths to ask, the heart is open (fourth of the five marks).
• Delighting in giving and sharing — 樂於施與分享 — dānasaṁvibhāgarato — In this loosening, this giving, the heart is glad, not forced (fifth of the five marks).

IV. Self-Grasping, and "Emptiness"

• "Mine" — 我所 — mamattā / mamāyita — "Mine"—the habit of drawing the world, piece by piece, inside the boundary of "mine."
• Self-grasping — 我執 — ahaṃkāra (Skt) — The "I"—the clutching subject itself.
• Emptiness — 空 — śūnyatā (Skt) / suññatā (P) — Not "nothing," but "no fixed, iron-cast self that can be clutched."
• Existence by designation — 假名有 — prajñapti-sat (Skt) — Really and truly there, fully usable—yet its "being" is pieced together from conditions, not standing on its own.
• The three wheels / the three wheels empty — 三輪／三輪體空 — trimaṇḍala / trimaṇḍala-pariśuddhi (Skt) — Giver, receiver, gift; all three without fixed self-nature, all three loosened through (the treatises also say "three things unobtainable," "three purifications").
• Prajñā (prajñā-pāramitā) — 般若（波羅蜜） — prajñā / prajñā-pāramitā (Skt) — The wisdom that sees through to reality and illuminates emptiness—the one thing that makes giving a pāramitā.
• Non-abiding ("abiding nowhere") — 無住（應無所住） — (apratiṣṭhita, not abiding) — The mind not stopping on, not sticking to, any mark—the Diamond Sūtra's other name for "the three wheels empty."

V. Pāramitā, and the Three Bases of Merit

• Pāramitā — 波羅蜜 — pāramitā (Skt) / pāramī (P) — Reaching the other shore; its meaning is not "done to perfection" but the condition of having no end—all things, all times, all kinds.
• The pāramitā of giving — 檀波羅蜜（布施波羅蜜） — dāna-pāramitā — Giving that can carry a person across to the other shore—giving joined with prajñā, its three wheels loosened through.
• The three bases of meritorious activity — 三福業事 — puññakiriyavatthu (P) — The three root things by which merit is made: giving, virtue, cultivation.
• —made of giving — 施所成 — dānamaya — Merit constituted by giving.
• —made of virtue — 戒所成 — sīlamaya — Merit constituted by keeping virtue (an old Chinese translation renders it "the deed of equality"—treating all beings alike).
• —made of cultivation — 修所成 — bhāvanāmaya — Merit constituted by cultivating the mind.
• Virtue — 戒 — sīla (P) / śīla (Skt) — The self-ordering of conduct; keeping a precept is itself a kind of giving.

VI. Stages and Frameworks of the Path

• Stream-enterer — 預流 — sotāpanna (P) / srotaāpanna (Skt) — One who has stepped into the stream of liberation and cannot fall back.
• The factors of stream-entry — 預流支 — sotāpattiyaṅga — The marks of one who has entered the stream (the first three: unshakable confidence in the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Saṅgha; the fourth: virtue—or letting-go, or wisdom).
• Unshakable confidence — 不壞淨 — aveccappasāda (P) — Confidence in the Three Jewels that cannot be broken.
• Field of merit — 福田 — puññakkhetta (P) / puṇyakṣetra (Skt) — That toward which an offering bears fruit and benefit—the Three Jewels, persons of virtue.
• The saṅgha of the four directions — 四方僧伽 — cātuddisa saṅgha (P) — The whole body of monastics—east, south, west, north, past and to come, including those not yet born; an offering placed here can be claimed by no one as his own.
• Joy — 喜 — pīti (P) / prīti (Skt) — The gladness that arises in practice; true joy sinks downward and turns into tranquility.
• Tranquility — 輕安 — passaddhi (P) / praśrabdhi (Skt) — The resting and settling of body and mind (the old Chinese translations render it "calm-resting," "the awakening-factor of ease"). After a true gift the heart settles; a bargaining gift leaves only restlessness.
• The seven factors of awakening — 七覺支 — bojjhaṅga (P) / bodhyaṅga (Skt) — The seven factors that lead to awakening; the passage from joy to tranquility is the touchstone that tells true practice from false.
• Intention — 思 — cetanā (P/Skt) — The directional pulse of a single thought—the seed of karma. In giving, intention comes first.
• Causal condition / cause — 因緣／因 — hetu-pratyaya / hetu (Skt) — The direct cause from which a thing arises. The cause of a gift is that one thought of intention.
• Dominant condition — 增上緣 — adhipati-pratyaya (Skt) — The conditions that help from the side (eyes, hands, carts and horses—down to today's phone platforms)—conditions, not the cause.
• The graduated teaching — 次第說法 — anupubbi-kathā (P) — The Buddha's fixed sequence for newcomers: the talk on giving, the talk on virtue, the talk on the heavens… giving is always the first step.

VII. Huayan and the Dharma-Realm

• Dharma-realm — 法界 — dharmadhātu (Skt) — The whole of reality, layer upon layer without end, each part mirroring and containing each—where this road arrives.
• The vast cultivation of offerings — 廣修供養 — (the third of Samantabhadra's great vows) — Stretching offering until there is no edge: to all Buddhas, thought after thought without interruption, never exhausted.
• Spiritual friends — 善知識 — kalyāṇamitra (Skt) / kalyāṇamitta (P) — The good teachers and friends who lead you toward the loosening of self-grasping—the fifty-three whom Sudhana visited.

VIII. Names of Persons

Disciples and Householders

• Mahānāma — 摩訶男 — Mahānāma — The Śākyan householder at the head of his clan, for whom the Buddha taught the six recollections.
• Kāḷigodhā — 迦梨瞿陀 — Kāḷigodhā — A Śākyan laywoman who confirmed her own stream-entry by "letting-go"; the Buddha sealed it on the spot.
• Sīha (the general) — 師子（將軍） — Sīha (senāpati) — The general of Vesālī who asked the Buddha whether giving bears fruit visible here and now.
• Anāthapiṇḍika (Sudatta) — 給孤獨（善授） — Anāthapiṇḍika (Sudatta) — The great elder who bought the Jeta Grove by covering it with gold and offered it to the saṅgha of the four directions.
• Mahāpajāpatī Gotamī — 摩訶波闍波提瞿曇彌 — Mahāpajāpatī Gotamī — The aunt who raised the Buddha; she wove a robe with her own hands to offer Him, and He guided her to offer it to the Saṅgha.
• Bimbisāra — 頻婆娑羅 — Bimbisāra — The king of Magadha who offered the Bamboo Grove—by tradition the first monastery.
• Velāma — 鞞藍／毘羅摩 — Velāma — The brahmin who performed the great gift of eighty-four thousand—in fact the Buddha in a past life.
• Bhadrika — 跋提長者 — Bhadrika — The elder for whom Moggallāna set out the "five great gifts" (the five precepts are themselves five great gifts).

Bodhisattvas

• Sadāparibhūta, "Never Disrespectful" — 常不輕 — Sadāparibhūta — The bodhisattva who bowed to everyone he met, saying, "You all shall become Buddhas."
• Bhaiṣajyarāja / Sarvasattvapriyadarśana — 藥王／一切眾生喜見 — Bhaiṣajyarāja / Sarvasattvapriyadarśana — The bodhisattva who burned his body as an offering to the Buddha—what that fire was burning was "I."
• Sudhana — 善財 — Sudhana — The youth who visited fifty-three spiritual friends and walked into the dharma-realm.
• Samantabhadra — 普賢 — Samantabhadra — The protagonist of the ten great vows, "the vast cultivation of offerings" among them; that the Dharma itself is giving was spoken plainly from his own lips.
• Mañjuśrī — 文殊 — Mañjuśrī — The bodhisattva of wisdom who set Sudhana on the road, and met him again at its end.
• Maitreya — 彌勒 — Maitreya — Sudhana's fifty-second spiritual friend.

Patriarchs and Treatise Masters

• Nāgārjuna — 龍樹 — Nāgārjuna — Author of the Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom and the Middle Treatise—the central treatise-master of this book.
• Vasubandhu — 世親（天親） — Vasubandhu — Author of the Treatise on the Ten Grounds Sūtra, the Abhidharmakośa, and more.
• Asaṅga — 無著 — Asaṅga — Author of the Ornament of the Mahāyāna Sūtras and the Compendium of the Mahāyāna.
• Buddhaghosa — 覺音 — Buddhaghosa — Author of the Visuddhimagga; the great commentator of the southern tradition.
• Zhiyi — 智顗 — (Tiantai school, Sui) — "The Dharma may serve as the norm, but it does not carry itself abroad"; the true dharma-offering is wisdom-contemplation turned within.
• Fazang — 法藏 — (Huayan school, Tang) — "The single practice of giving gathers in all practices"; "vast or brief, according to conditions."
• Chengguan — 澄觀 — (Huayan school, Tang) — "If the gift of wealth accords with the Dharma, it is all dharma-offering"; "the two sages contain each other."
• Zongmi — 宗密 — (Huayan and Chan, Tang) — Commentator on the chapter of Samantabhadra's practices and vows; joined the teachings and Chan through "thought after thought continuing without interruption."
• Jizang — 吉藏 — (Sanlun school, Sui–Tang) — In his Lotus commentary: "reverence to the body is reverence to the Buddha to come."
• Zhanran — 湛然 — (Tiantai school, Tang) — The warning: "if it is not so, it becomes useless asceticism."
• Shandao — 善導 — (Pure Land school, Tang) — The verdict of "goodness mixed with poison."
• Yongming Yanshou — 永明延壽 — (Pure Land and Chan, Five Dynasties–Song) — "Cast buddha-recollection into a scattered mind, and the scattered mind cannot but become Buddha."
• Ouyi Zhixu — 蕅益智旭 — (late Ming–early Qing) — The Essentials of the Amitābha Sūtra; the three axes of faith, vow, and practice.
• Yinguang — 印光 — (Republican era) — The critique, from within the tradition, of buddha-recollection practiced to seek merit and reward.